The present invention relates generally to the field of cloud computing, and more particularly to managing virtual devices in a cloud computing environment.
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network (typically the Internet). An enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software allows a physical computing device to be electronically separated into one or more “virtual” devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. Some cloud computing providers manage virtual devices using services such as anti-virus, backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, health-check, security, and patching, for example (where the service of managing virtual devices in a cloud computing environment is sometimes referred to as a “managed cloud service” and/or a “cloud managed service”).
Patching is a known service for managing virtual devices in a cloud computing environment. Generally speaking, patching involves updating provisioned virtual machines (VMs) by obtaining and applying approved operating system and software patches. In many cloud computing environments, a new VM is created by deploying a VM template, a reusable image created from a VM (or, more specifically, a snapshot of a VM at a certain place in time).